Occurrence of Traffic Accidents in the Philippines: An Application of Poisson Regression Analysis

Abstract

A road accident is commonly attributed to the collision of vehicles, pedestrian, or with an object that will result to death, disability and damage to property. Road accidents were caused by driver’s errors(26%), mechanical defect (12%), over speeding (18%), drinking spree before driving(1%) , damaged roads (5%). Daytime traffic accidents were found higher than in the night. The study focused on the occurrence of the traffic accidents from period 2001 to 2006 and events were evaluated using the factors that contribute into the accidents. An empirical model was constructed to forecast the number of accidents using the causes of accidents and the period of occurrence.

Road accident is a rare event with which number of occurrence is expressed in positive integers, hence, Poisson Regression analysis was used in this study to examine the number of events given the causes of traffic accidents and the period of occurrence.

Keywords: Poisson regression, traffic accidents, Philippines